Month: December 2010

  • Farewell China

    Hard to believe that it is already our last night in China. There are many things we aren’t going to miss: the driving, the cold/unheated buildings, the people selling Chinese whiskey and bread outside our apartment that yell every day, seeing everyone hawking loogies, our bathroom, not being able to flush toilet paper, “squatter” toilets,…

  • Kung Fu

    Last week my student Bee told me one of his hobbies is Kung Fu. I asked him if he would perform for Doug and I and he happily agreed. He used nun chucks and moved so quickly and gracefully that he made it look really easy. He was really entertaining to watch. Bee asked if Doug…

  • Streets of Xiangtan

    Take several million people and add bicycles, rickshaws, wagons, mopeds, moto-taxis, cars and buses then subtract all common sense, courtesy for others and a general regard for human life and what does that equal? A typical street in China. At the beginning of the semester I had a lot of students ask me what the…

  • Engrish Corner

    Chinese and English are two very different languages. So different, that translating from one to the other gets pretty rough. Fortunately this is pretty humorous. Sometimes just plain ridiculous. On little signs or menus it’s usually just funny and entertaining, but other times we’ll see some product that is mass produced with such a poor…

  • Hot Pot

    The main food street here on campus is called Lianjin. Lianjin was one of the first places we ate at when we arrived in our little humble town of Xiangtan.  It was culture shock slapping me full force in the face!  At the entrance of the street lay giant piles of rotting garbage; more often than…